Ex-lawmakers charged with bribery, extortion (Alaska) [View All]

[harpboy_ak]

Source: Anchorage Daily News

Former Alaska state legislators Pete Kott and Bruce Weyhrauch have been indicted by a federal grand jury on several counts of extortion, bribery, wire fraud and mail fraud.

(snip)

Kott was arrested at home in Juneau around 9 a.m. Friday, a spokesman for the FBI said. Weyhrauch was arrested later in the morning. Both are being held in the federal courthouse in Juneau.

FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez would not say if additional arrests are coming. "It’s a continuing investigation," he said.

Some of the charges against Kott and Weyhrauch involve the Legislature’s consideration last year of a natural gas pipeline and a petroleum production tax proposed by former Gov. Frank Murkowski. Kott, a former House speaker from Eagle River, is accused of seeking and accepting bribes to push positions favored by executives of a company that is not named in the indictment. Weyhrauch traded votes for the promise of a job, according to the charges.



Read more: http://www.adn.com/news/politics/story/8853688p-8754302c.html

---

Ted Stevens' son will be the next arrest!

This is a just-breaking episode of a story that started about a year ago with FBI raids on legislative offices. The word around Juneau is that Federal warrants are also out for State Sens. Don Olsen (D-Nome), John Cowdery (R-Anch), & Vic Kohring (R-Wasilla?), and that Olsen & Cowdery will be turning themselves in at the Federal Courthouse this afternoon. Apparently Sen. Kohring was having back surgery today.

The online PDF of the indictment reads like a bad whodunit. See http://www.adn.com/static/includes/alaskapolitics/kottweyhrauch.pdf

Note that the indictment is coming from the New York office of the DOJ Public Integrity Section, not the interim-appointed current U. S. Attorney.

My sources in the Alaska Capitol tell me that Company A is VECO, and that Bill Allen & his VP Rick Smith have both been arrested for bribery. Other arrests can be expected, and here the biggest shoe left to drop: "Senator A" named in the indictment is former State Senate President Ben Stevens (R-Anch), son of US Sen. "Tubular Ted" Stevens.